How to boost your blogs social voting usability in a few easy steps and be a star on the home page
Posted on | October 11, 2007 | 13 Comments
A few simple steps could make a difference in your blogs usability!
These things are not the total solution to becoming a star of your favorite social network, but hey may help your post get its feet wet. A few days ago I noticed on a blog that as soon as one person voted or submitted a post that many were to follow. I also noted that 70% of the traffic had already been to the page. The results were very disappointing in that out of the 30% of traffic that visited the site after someone had Stumbled it more than half of them stumbled it too. So many visitors were lost to lack of effective usability.
What could have been done in preparation to this surge of traffic and convinced them to take a more active part in the social activities of the blog?
- First thing since it was a post related to SEO I would have submitted it to Sphinn. If it were on another niche I would have found another Pligg type voting site to add it to.
- Next I would have added it to StumbleUpon. This would capture those visitors that do not wish to take the time to write a review, but do thumb up an article they like. Adding some paid Stumbles may also have been a good boost to get it started as well.
- Third option that should have been utilised is the Digg submission and a shout to everyone on the friends list.
When each of these three things are added it is making it that much easier to get your users to interact with your site.
One thing that I did not mention was to make the first comment and be sure to answer each and every comment on your blog. You should always be the last comment on any post.
If you have any more simple methods to make a blog post more user friendly I would love to know them.
Do you know who is visiting your blog? is an example of a post that was not user friendly and did not receive very much in the way of activity. I did nothing to promote this page other than answer a few comments. How would you have helped it along its way? This post had several hundred people read it over several days, but only a few participated.
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13 Responses to “How to boost your blogs social voting usability in a few easy steps and be a star on the home page”
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October 11th, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Am I wrong or is a little self promotion going to far with a new site? In my opinion the author of a post should be the one to make the first step in promotion.
October 11th, 2007 @ 5:06 pm
I wouldn't look on this as self-promotion.
Since I removed a Digg button from my blog, no one even bothers submitting my content to Digg (not that it is very suitable for a Digg audience)
Have you seen anyone confirm the limit to how many friends you can have on Digg and still use the shout feature, or has that been fixed now. Last time I tried I had too many friends.
October 11th, 2007 @ 5:19 pm
@ Andy
Not sure what the cut off limit is on Digg shout friends. I only have about 75 friends on Digg. This should keep me well below any limits. So far I have only added people that know or have read and liked what they are digging. Yesterday I deleted some that were taking advantage of the shout option and were sending only crap that I have no interest in. They have taken me off their list too so no loss.
October 11th, 2007 @ 6:57 pm
I do need to make a very important point!
DO NOT DIGG YOUR OWN POSTS!
I only submitted this one to prove a point that with out a submission it will never make it on Digg. If you have a friend that likes your writing ask them to submit it for you. Better yet, just leave a message at the bottom of your post asking the first person to please submit it to Digg.
October 11th, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
"This post had several hundred people read it over several days, but only a few participated."
That's probably the case with most posts in general. I'm noticing there is a culture of 'participators', those that understand the value of community, support, promotion, etc.
It's impressive to me when I see sites that naturally pull such activity regularly.
October 11th, 2007 @ 9:58 pm
A little self promotion is not going too far … everyone is doing it anyway … and if you ask me, if you don't promote yourself noone will (even in real life) so do the promotion and if others like what you have to offer they will spread the word …
October 11th, 2007 @ 10:26 pm
What is really interesting to me is that with this post, more than half are participating one way or another. Even the private email comments are more than some past posts on this site.
This proves that if you do not ask for it how will others know what they can give.
Marcos wrote the post "Becoming A Social Media War Strategist – Manage Your Troops Intelligently" a few days ago. It is on target that you need focus what you want out of a post when you write it.
October 12th, 2007 @ 11:50 am
I started out by submitting my own posts to StumbleUpon but after a few submissions I started to encounter problems. The Thumbs up button would appear green but when I clicked the button to check the reviews, SU would report that the url was not in it's database. It's as though my own submissions were being deleted.
Now I'm fairly lucky that most of my posts get submitted by somebody else so I dont bother with the self submission there. I do submit my own stuff to Sphinn though – but the rules state that you can so that's not so bad.
October 12th, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
I just read a great post on this topic at the cre8asite forums called Eliciting Blog Comments
I think the usage of CTA's on blogs is a tad underrated. A pretty image link in the side bar that links to the comments form, with the right CTA could do wonders.
Adding your picture writing in a personable tone, posing a lot of questions, and blatantly asking for participation are things that seem to work really well.
Talk to your readers! Thats what we'resposed to be doing, right? I love the idea of asking for a Digg. I love the idea of using a chat widget that invites your readers to IM you…
All great stuff. (And great post!)
October 13th, 2007 @ 12:04 am
@ Caroline
Since I am very active on StumbleUpon I do not believe that I am pushing it if I add a link or two. But if you are new and do not have a very large Stumble track record, I am sure some will complain. The reason I like to Stumble my own post is to present the most productive description and keywords for my tags. This could be remedied by asking someone or even placing a small box at the bottom of your page with specific directions on what you would like submitted.
My opinion is that a requested review is better than no review at all.
@ Megan
Thank you for the kind words and thank you for the link to cre8asiteforums.com, now I have even more reading to do this weekend…
October 17th, 2007 @ 10:15 pm
Just to follow up, I can now use shout… so they must have fixed the limits.
For some reason it only went to 100 people on my one use so far, but I received loads of messages from people thanking me for the submission that they enjoyed
With almost 4500 Diggs now it has gained me 50 new fans in the last 2 days.
October 17th, 2007 @ 10:32 pm
@ Andy,
I am still very interested on what the cut off is. It would only take a few times on the home page to increase your friends list by several hundred.
November 9th, 2007 @ 1:34 pm
I don't see any problem with self-promotion at all. In fact, it's something to be applauded. Submit yourself to any sites as long as it's ok in the TOS. If it is, then submit away.
If you aren't comfortable with self-promotion then it's very likely you won't get anywhere in business. Period.